


Posthumous

by rapunzariccia



Category: Final Fantasy IV
Genre: F/M, Gen, pre-game, what do you mean nonappearing NPCs aren't as important as the main cast surely that's a lie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-26
Updated: 2012-09-26
Packaged: 2017-11-15 02:44:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/522271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rapunzariccia/pseuds/rapunzariccia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's hard watching others face the world when you want them to stay young and innocent. Growing up too quickly inspires you to protect others from the rest of the world, but that's easier said than done.</p><p>(pre-game FFIV, or, Kain Highwind's Awkward Teenage Life)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Posthumous

Cecil is away from the castle when the news is broken. He is away with knights on chocoboback who intend to teach him to fend for himself in the wild, because it is quite honestly a disgrace that the kingdom's crown prince does not already know how to look after himself when away from his homeland. In all fairness, he has been a sickly child and the cold makes his bones stiff, but while he has more common sense than to eat the berries of the nearest bush, he doesn't have much in the way of worldly knowledge crammed into his head either. Kain knows he will likely come back home with a big, pained grin and jerky movements as he near-falls off his steed. The boy is nothing if not overzealous when it comes to returning to familiarity.

It doesn't seem right that the boy is away, either. He can be out of sight, but never out of mind. At every corner there is the memory of some shared mishap between the boys: a broken vase here, a grazed knee there, and with every third step he remembers too the girl that runs with them from time to time. In his mind's eye she stops and turns to chide him for being slow. Kain has to remember that he is alone wandering the castle and that there are men around that will scold him if he is caught clattering about without purpose. If he's seen walking about, he can lie and say he is running errands for one of the guard. It wouldn't be the first time he has attempted to kill time idly and gotten away with it.

The castle itself feels empty when his time is spent apart from the prince and their mage friend. Something about that strikes him oddly – there is no end to the faces both young and old that he passes in the halls, and he thinks that maybe he should have other friends to impress when his two favourites aren't around. More often than not, Kain finds himself alone. He has never thought to shy from solitude, but knows he should: there are children younger than him that have more acquaintances than he can bear to imagine himself with in a single day. Frequently he wonders how the other boys can stomach each other. Cecil is a far cry from the children that puff themselves up with all the pompousness they can muster and swan about the castle like they own it. His father's men are kindly enough to him and allow him to join them whenever he so wishes, but he's never seen the appeal in the tasteless songs they like to recite, and the youngest of them is seven years his senior.

There is little to do without his friends nearby that would improve his day. He could always return to his room and pretend to finish studying the trade route between Baron and Damcyan, or he could don his practise armour and attempt to jump from the grounds to the lowest ramparts, but the books are boring and the armour is heavy. Much joy as it is to push oneself away from the ground even the slightest amount, the steel does its hardest to keep him earthbound for as long as possible, and his fingers quickly numb from the wind's merciless attentions. Even if it were warmer, the air would find a way to freeze his extremities. For now there is little he wishes to do but avoid the cracks in the flagstones beneath him and wonder sullenly when the prince will return. If there are other things that require his attention, he pays them no mind.

He rounds a corner absently and is met with the girth of the guard captain. Kain's back straightens immediately and he places his hands behind him – too often has he been scolded for dirty nails, and he does not want to wash them in freezing water any day. “Sir,” he says politely, and Baigan's stare falls on him. He resists the urge to fidget.  
“Ah,” the older man says, and purses his lips. For a moment it seems as though he is going to deliver some judgement, and when it doesn't come, Kain chances a look around his stomach. There he sees a familiar face with its eyes cast down. “Good,” Baigan continues, and a hand comes down heavily on Kain's shoulder before he is able to get his friend's attention. “I was about to come and find you. You keep company with miss Farrell often, do you not?”

At that he simply nods, wishing that the hand would remove itself from his person. Something feels amiss. King Baron's personal guard has never sought him out unless Cecil was in trouble – usually because of Kain's own misdirection, he thinks wryly – and as he looks up at the man he sees a crease between his brows that has been missing for a long time. He looks behind himself and his bulk shifts with the movement. Rosa's hair is tangled and her eyes red, and Kain's stomach does an angry flip.  
“Yes, sir,” he says. His mind is racing faster than it has ever gone before. All he can think is _if somebody has hurt her I am going to kill them_. Baigan nods.  
“I leave her in your capable hands, then. Do be a gentleman and cheer the young lady up.”

Then he is gone: a sweeping of gold brocade on stiff red uniform, and he leaves only awkwardness and the heavy scent of cologne in his wake. Kain waits until his footsteps have disappeared before his shoulders slump again, and stares curiously at his friend. She's still pretty, he decides, even when she looks almost ill from what he assumes is sadness. She stares back at him and wipes her nose inelegantly on her sleeve. Neither of them say a word. Kain inclines his head back the way he has walked from as a page runs past them, and Rosa answers his silent question by leading the way back down the corridor.

It takes them outside where the wind buffets them viciously; Rosa staggers and rights herself without a word, and he does his best not to get caught up in the apprentice robes she is wearing that billow to the side. He can't remember the last time autumnal breezes were so strong, but like everything else in the world, the wind is a fickle creature. He attempts to pay it no mind.  
“Is he back?”  
“No.”

It would be easier to ignore the elements were Cecil not missing from their party of three. Of _course_ she thinks of him. It's impossible for the boy to stray from their thoughts for too long – Kain himself is guilty of being unable to put him from mind when he isn't here. He knows it's an unbecoming trait, but he can't help the stabs of jealousy and ensuing guilt that creep up on him. Beside him the girl shivers but says nothing, and he pretends not to see. It's not her fault that the last member of their brigade is missing, nor that she cares about him, but it has never inspired confidence in him. He thinks briefly of his family and remembers hearing that the Highwind men have been terrible romantics for generations, and decides then and there that he has disgraced the family name by ignoring her discomfort.

She leads him halfway across the castle to a deserted stretch of wall that looks out to the mountains before she says anything, and the wind snatches her words clean away. Kain hangs back, unsure whether she wants anyone by her side.  
“Huh?”  
“I said: my father is dead.”  
He shivers then, too. There is so very little he can say to that – so little he knows how to say. Bereavement is no new thing to him or to any child in Baron, where the majority of men serve in the army to some degree, but he has never had to offer sympathies before. He has never been close enough to any other to need to speak to them informally before. “Oh,” he finds himself saying.  
“Yeah,” Rosa echoes. She turns to him and presses her back against the stone wall. “Oh.”

It seems strange that she can be so miserable and that her eyes can remain such a pretty colour. He's known her father for a very long time now – the man had served under his own father's command; if he hadn't he likely wouldn't know Rosa – and has his own plethora of memories about the man. He thinks that out of the Dragoons, Rosa's father is the closest he had to family once his own father passed. Thinking of him gone now doesn't sit right. He looks away, and back again.  
"Sorry," he says. Rosa shrugs. "Do you- uh- if you need to talk about it-"

She shrugs again, and he glances around out of habit. They try not to openly display the bad manners they've picked up from around the castle. Kain has been in trouble for bad posture often enough. “I'm,” she starts, “no. I'm okay.”  
"You don't look it," he says, and is rewarded with the faintest of smiles. Hair is still stuck to the dried tear-trails on her cheeks and the wind has cracked her lips; she runs her tongue over them and sniffs loudly again.  
"You're really bad at cheering girls up," she replies, and laughs weakly at his expression. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it?"

“It's okay.” It is. She could be trying her hardest to hit him and he wouldn't mind. He already regrets the envy that rippled through him earlier and now wishes Cecil were here with them. The other boy would at least be better at comforting her – he would probably throw his arms about her unashamedly and pet her hair and say all the right things. Kain is gangly and awkward in comparison, all limbs that don't want to cooperate around Rosa and strange phrases that knights much older than him say when they think he needs their pity. He's never sure what to make of all the _your father would be so proud of you_ s. How should they know what his father would feel? Richard Highwind has been dead and his body missing for close to eleven years and his son remembers so little of him. It doesn't seem right that anyone else should recall his manners and thoughts so easily – but Rosa's situation is different. Rosa has known her father for so much longer and loved him wholeheartedly, and Kain does not doubt for a second that if anyone is deserving of the Dragoons' condolences, it is her. He tells her as much.

“Hm,” she says in response, and looks right through him. Uncertainty wells in his stomach – perhaps he should have kept his mouth shut? He really wishes Cecil were here, he does not know if he's saying the right things or not – and Rosa shivers again. She looks so sad.  
“Is,” he starts at the same time she opens her mouth to say his name. They stop and start again at the same time and end up laughing at the mess that is their incoherency. He raises a brow and mimes locking his mouth shut, prompting her to continue.  
“Do you remember your father at all?”

Kain chews on his lower lip as he thinks. He's read all the books and heard all the legends he could investigate about the man, and subsequently built the late great Highwind up in his mind as a towering man that alternates between being terrifying and comforting. He thinks of the ceremonial armour that rests on its stand in the Dragoon quarters and how it gleams in the moonlight, and remembers being able to approach the great dragon that used to live near the castle without fear because of the man that trod behind him with one hand on his back. He thinks about how often he thinks of his father and bites his lip so hard he winces.  
“I don't, really. Sorry.”

The girl shakes her head and wipes her nose again. “It's okay.” It's really not. He could – he _should_ put his arm around her shoulders and tell her that it will hurt less with time; he could talk about the legend that the Highwind name has entertained for so long and how the equally great line of Farrell has intersected it quite nicely and lead to two of the greatest friendships in the history of Baron that he knows of, but something in his mind burns with injustice that someone else might think of his father the same way he does. There are meant to be no secrets between friends, and yet Kain cannot trust his. He thinks about how _unfair_ it is to have to share all the time, and is jealous of no one for indulging in gossip.

“Is your mother going to be alright?” he asks instead, and hopes that she doesn't answer the question with one about his own mother. He knows even less about her than he does about Eblan's foreign policy. Rosa shakes her head.  
“Probably. With time. I hope so. I don't think I've ever seen her so upset before. She said something about leaving-”  
“Leaving Baron?” he asks, and knows his voice is too loud.  
“-leaving the castle. She doesn't want to practise white magic without him, I don't think.”

She shudders as the wind blows itself against her, and Kain crosses the distance between them to finally put an arm around her. The flesh of her own is horribly cold beneath his fingers and she leans gratefully into him.  
“It'll be okay,” he murmurs, and it sounds like she stifles another sob deep in her throat. “You'll be okay. I promise. Cecil will come back and we'll all- I don't know, but we'll make things better. We're still here. Let's get you out of the cold, come on.”  
He guides her inside and glares at everyone that spares a moment to glance at them. She is _his_ responsibility, no one else's, and he won't allow anyone else to try and cheer her. From somewhere below his shoulder he thinks he hears a _please don't die as well_ , and begins to rub her frozen arm. With any luck the contact will be enough for now.


End file.
